I agree with your perspective. I think what people find most scary is the prospect that as the corporation improves their efficiency the workers gain no benefit in their pay, despite in all likelihood being the ones that provided those better tools.
Automation is just the extreme form of optimization where the actual job is erased. Although new jobs will be created they will not go to the persons that lost their jobs.
Its inevitable that we start training our young people to expect to learn new skill all their lives, and I think this new technological era is beginning to do that. Young kids know learn to use complex smartphones in less than nothing.
The problem remains what to do with the unskilled population and the unfair accumulation of wealth. People work more and more hours and have less time to themselves today than 20 years ago, while our global production has skyrocketed. There is a justified feeling that not all goes well in the world. I'm a die hard fan of capitalism and free markets, but even I must admit that the working man is getting the short end of the deal and is not getting the opportunity to pursuit otherwise.
In a world of full automation, what jobs would be left, how would the common man earn a living?
The tides of change draw near.
People work more and more hours and have less time to themselves today than 20 years ago, while our global production has skyrocketed.
I agree. Since in a free market, this scenario is impossible, we can safely conclude that the reason this scenario exists is that we do not currently have a free market. Instead, we have a market based on fraudulent currencies which extract value from society and siphon it to those who control the currency. As the economy grows and production increases, they have siphoned more and more wealth off, growing fat on the spoils while we work harder and harder for less and less. This is an evil which I do not have the words to describe, and I will not continue to be part of that system forever. That's why I believe cryptocurrency is so important: it gives people a viable exit strategy from that system.